Innate Immune Receptors for Nucleic Acids

The innate immune system has evolved to detect microbes and sterile tissue damage with the help of a series of signaling receptors. One key strategy is to detect infectious microbes or host cell damage by recognizing nucleic acids that are modified or appear in compartment normally devoid of nucleic acids. Here, we describe two methods that allow studying the molecular interaction between various nucleic acid recognizing signaling receptors with their ligands. A ligand pull-down assay can be used to show a known interaction between a ligand and its receptor or the method can be utilized as a discovery approach to identify an unknown receptor to a given ligand. An AlphaScreen experiment can be set up to assess the ligand binding affinity to a given receptor.